The complaint was based on the accusation that MacLeans Magazine had published a number of Islamophobic articles most notably an excerpt from Mark Steyn‘s book America Alone.

A complaint was originally filed with the Ontario Human Rights Commission which ruled that it did not have jurisdiction. However in doing so they summarily convicted MacLeans with their comments.

While freedom of expression must be recognized as a cornerstone of a functioning democracy, the Commission has serious concerns about the content of a number of articles concerning Muslims that have been published by Maclean’s magazine and other media outlets. This type of media coverage has been identified as contributing to Islamophobia and promoting societal intolerance towards Muslim, Arab and South Asian Canadians. The Commission recognizes and understands the serious harm that such writings cause, both to the targeted communities and society as a whole. And, while we all recognize and promote the inherent value of freedom of expression, it should also be possible to challenge any institution that contributes to the dissemination of destructive, xenophobic opinions.

A complaint was also filed with the BC Human Rights Tribunal which heard the case over a 5 day period beginning on June 2nd, 2008, which was live-blogged by columnist Andrew Coyne here, here, here, here, here and here.

A decision has yet to be rendered on this one.

I wonder if the Canadian HRC’s dismissal of the case is based on the realization that they may have bitten off more than they can chew. This case has drawn a great deal of unwanted publicity as to how arbitrary and one-sided their process is and they may rightfully be afraid that the government may be moved to reduce their power.

Which is exactly what the provincial and federal governments should do. Any government organization with the power to impact people’s lives to the extent that the HRCs can do, with the mantra that ‘truth is not a defence’, need to be severely curtailed.

Interestingly enough, I cannot find any reference on the Canadian Human Rights Commission’s website that refers to their dismissing the case against MacLeans. I’ll keep looking.

For a westerner the mentality of the mid-east suicide bombers is literally beyond comprehension, as this article points out.

Zahra Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women’s magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother, who undoubtedly loves her son. She has ambitions for him, but they are different from those of most mothers in the West. She wants her son to become a suicide bomber.

At the recent funeral for the assassinated Hezbollah terrorist Imad Moughnaya — the mass murderer responsible for killing 241 marines in 1983 and more than 100 women, children and men in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 — Ms. Maladan was quoted in the New York Times giving the following warning to her son: “if you’re not going to follow the steps of the Islamic resistance martyrs, then I don’t want you.”

[*****]

Now there is a new image of mothers urging their children to die, and then celebrating the martyrdom of their suicidal sons and daughters by distributing sweets and singing wedding songs. More and more young women — some married with infant children — are strapping bombs to their (sometimes pregnant) bellies, because they have been taught to love death rather than life. Look at what is being preached by some influential Islamic leaders:

“We are going to win, because they love life and we love death,” said Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. He has also said: “[E]ach of us lives his days and nights hoping more than anything to be killed for the sake of Allah.” Shortly after 9/11, Osama bin Laden told a reporter: “We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the big difference between us.”

“The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death,” explained Afghani al Qaeda operative Maulana Inyadullah. Sheik Feiz Mohammed, leader of the Global Islamic Youth Center in Sydney, Australia, preached: “We want to have children and offer them as soldiers defending Islam. Teach them this: There is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a mujahid.” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech: “It is the zenith of honor for a man, a young person, boy or girl, to be prepared to sacrifice his life in order to serve the interests of his nation and his religion.”

Note that the leaders of these organizations don’t seem as eager to martyr themselves as their vulnerable, young followers. The followers are simply cannon fodder to be used to advance the cause. But then it was always thus.

Though it is hard to believe that mothers would buy into that corrupt philosophy and literally shame their children into committing suicide and murdering other innocents in the process.

What is probably the saddest element of this cultural death wish is that these young people feel their lives are so desperate, so hopeless, that they find the thought of dying and going to some hoped for after-life paradise a more attractive option that living in the here and now.

Mark Steyn is one of my favourite commentators. His commentary is candid, humourous and extremely well-written. His book, ‘America Alone’ is an excellent read. I liked this article on the West’s weakness in dealing with radical Islam.

Islam isn’t interested in winning the debate, it’s interested in winning the real fight – the clash of civilizations, the war, society, culture, the whole magilla. That’s why it doesn’t care about the inherent contradictions of the argument: in the Middle East early in 2002, I lost count of the number of Muslims I met who believed simultaneously (a) that 9/11 was pulled off by the Mossad and (b) that it was a great victory for Islam. Likewise, it’s no stretch to feel affronted at the implication that you’re violently irrational and to threaten to murder anyone who says so. Western societies value logic because we value talk, and talks, and talking, on and on and on: that’s pretty much all we do, to the point where, faced with any challenge from Darfur to the Iranian nuclear program, our objective is to reduce the issue to just something else to talk about interminably. But, if you don’t prize debate and you merely want to win, getting hung up on logic is only going to get in your way. Take the most devastating rapier wit you know – Oscar Wilde, Noel Coward – and put him on a late-night subway train up against a psycho with a baseball bat. The withering putdown, the devastating aphorism will avail him nought.

Police said Wednesday that children were used in a weekend car bombing in which the driver gained permission to park in a busy shopping area after he pointed out that he was leaving his children in the back seat.

The account appeared to confirm one given Tuesday by a U.S. general. He said children were used in a Sunday bombing in northern Baghdad and labeled it a brutal new tactic put to use by insurgents to battle a five-week-old security crackdown in the capital.

Maj. Gen. Michael Barbero, deputy director for regional operations on the Joint Staff, said the vehicle used in the attack was waved through a U.S. military checkpoint because two children were visible in the back seat. He said it was the first reported use of children in a car bombing in Baghdad

“Children in the back seat lowered suspicion, (so) we let it move through, they parked the vehicle, the adults run out and detonate it with the children in the back,” Barbero told reporters in Washington. “The brutality and ruthless nature of this enemy hasn’t changed.”

Can they really justify this in the name of religion or is this the case of psychopathic terrorists that hide their true nature behind a sick interpretation of their religious teachings?

An Iranian court has dropped a death sentence against a teenager accused of killing a man who allegedly tried to rape her, the teenager’s lawyer said.

Nazanin Fatehi was convicted and sentenced to death more than a year ago after she admitted stabbing one of three men who allegedly tried to rape her and a 16-year-old niece. Fatehi was 17 years old at the time.

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“Five judges reviewed her case, and all of them admitted that what Fatehi did was only self-defense,” one of Fatehi’s lawyers, Mohammad Mostafaei, said Monday. “She just defended herself and her niece to avoid rape.”

Mostafaei said he expected the retrials court would sentence Fatehi – in accordance with Islamic law – to pay blood money to the family of the man.

If there hadn’t been international intervention she would have been executed.

Since the cellphone shots of Saddam’s execution hit the internet there has been criticism that the execution was undignified and crude. There are apparently protocols.

But while there is no manual for such occasions — modern history gives us relatively few instances of absolute rulers being deposed, tried and executed — all the talk after the hanging of Saddam Hussein suggests that we viewers thought there was some greater codification of the protocols and proprieties than was apparent in the mocking scene that unfolded.

When you look at what is called justice in many of the Islamic countries you get more of an understanding to how a murdering despot like Saddam Hussein can be tried, convicted and executed and still be held up as a martyr with some factions in the middle East.

Did she get a medal or at least did the other two men get their just desserts? Not a chance. The men went free and the girl was sentenced to hang for the murder of the thug.

Fortunately a former Miss Canada intervened and managed to get a retrial for the girl, now 19.

I would doubt that even with a retrial and some international attention there is any chance that the girl will be vindicated and released. The minute that she was attacked her fate was sealed. She had no options.

If she had allowed the men to rape her and her niece, the girls would have been subjected to 100 lashes under Iranian laws on chastity. If they had been married at the time they were raped they would likely have been found guilty of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning.

As I say, no options.

A isolated incident?

Iran is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Charter of the Rights of the Child, which prohibit the execution of anyone under 18. But there are records of 18 executions of child offenders in Iran since 1990. In 2005 alone, at least eight executions of children were recorded.

Iranian authorities have for the past four years been considering a law prohibiting the death penalty for offenders under 18. A recent BBC documentary revealed how on 15 August 2004 Atefeh Rajabi, 16, was hanged in Neka, about 100 miles from Tehran, for “engaging in acts incompatible with chastity”. Her age given in court documents was 22.

Islam is apparently not female friendly.

Hats off to Nazanin Afshin-Jam in publicizing this case and getting a retrial, but you would think that there would be bigger players in the human rights business who would be raising hell, not only about this one case, but the whole issue of women’s rights in these countries.

Small dead animals points us to just one more story that details the evil that Saddam Hussein visited on Iraq and its’ people. Generally I’m not a supporter of capital punishment but there are some people that are so dangerous and evil that, just like a rabid dog, need to be put down. Saddam Hussein was one of those people.

With the democrats sitting in a position of power in Washington there is definitely a push to “bring the boys home” from Iraq. The simple mindedness of this policy is so naive as to be frightening.

I’m with Mark Steyn on this. Writing in the Chicago Sun-Times on the Iraq Study Group and the rumours that they will recommend pulling the troops out of Iraq, Steyn says:

Don’t get me wrong, I like a Friars’ Club Roast as much as the next guy and I’m sure Jim Baker kibitzing with John Kerry was the hottest ticket in town. But doesn’t it strike you as just a tiny bit parochial? Aside from Senator Kerry, I wonder whether the commission thought to hear from anyone such as Goh Chok Tong, the former prime minister of Singapore. A couple of years back, on a visit to Washington just as the Democrat-media headless-chicken quagmire-frenzy was getting into gear, he summed it up beautifully:

”The key issue is no longer WMD or even the role of the U.N. The central issue is America’s credibility and will to prevail.”

As I write in my new book, Singaporean Cabinet ministers apparently understand that more clearly than U.S. senators, congressmen and former secretaries of state. Or, as one Baker Commission grandee told the New York Times, ”We had to move the national debate from whether to stay the course to how do we start down the path out.”

An ”exit strategy” on those terms is the path out not just from Iraq but from a lot of other places, too — including Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela, Russia, China, the South Sandwich Islands. For America would be revealed to the world as a fraud: a hyperpower that’s all hype and no power — or, at any rate, no will. According to the New York Sun, ”An expert adviser to the Baker-Hamilton commission expects the 10-person panel to recommend that the Bush administration pressure Israel to make concessions in a gambit to entice Syria and Iran to a regional conference . . .”

Read the whole article. Steyn makes sense and he is funny as well.

To pull out of Iraq now simply confirms to the world that the US has no staying power. Kill a few soldiers and they will limp home with their tail between their legs.

There is no question that they have misjudged amd mishandled the situation in Iraq, but setting a timetable to pull out the US troops will only encourage more violent opposition. If they think that by bailing out they will make their country safer they only prove that they have no understanding of the mindset of the Islamic fundamentalists.

If we weren’t talking about politics and politicians I would hope that common sense would prevail. We’ll see what Wednesday brings when the report is released.